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I would like to move my bitcoins to a Segwit Electrum wallet, however - I don't want to pay the high fees for the initial transfer. I though about using the change address, so that when I make payments with the regular Electrum bitcoin wallet, the change will be automatically sent to the Segwit address. Is it possible with the non-Segwit Electrum wallet? How do I set it up?

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  • Yes, it will work automatically if you have the Segwit wallet receiving address for the change address. You will have to manually create your transactions by hand. I do not know if the Electrum wallet will let you do this or not. Just read the first answer - apparently not.
    – Willtech
    Commented Jan 28, 2018 at 7:31
  • The Bitcoin network cleared transactions at below 5 satoshis/byte this night. It's a great time to simply move your funds right now.
    – Murch
    Commented Jan 28, 2018 at 14:49

2 Answers 2

1

It's not possible to do this automatically. Electrum doesn't mix and match segwit and non-segwit address types in the same wallet.

My suggestion is to first educate yourself on what using an Electrum segwit wallet will mean. Electrum uses bech32 addresses. You can read more about the implications of that here.

Next, if you decide you want to move to segwit after all you can create a new electrum wallet choosing segwit as the type and then move your coins there. In order to save money you can low ball the fee. Fees are actually quite low these days so you should be able to do this quite cheaply.

Electrum allows you to send money to multiple addresses in a single transaction so the next time you send bitcoin you can choose to send the balance funds in your wallet to an address in your new segwit wallet. To send to multiple addresses you enter the addresses as follows on the pay to field on the send tab:

1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE,0.5 bc1addressdfdfdfdfdfdfdfd,1.55

That is addresses and amounts separated by commas. Each address + amount on a separate line.

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No, it's not possible since Electrum using Bip44 for Regular bitcoin wallet and bip49 for SegWit wallets.

So derive path of legacy bitcoin wallet is m/44'/0'/0'/0/i and for SegWit its m/49'/0'/0'/0/i.

even if they're using the same path it's not possible to change address type.

if you are creating your transaction manually I guess that you can create SegWit address instead of legacy bitcoin address but new bech32 SegWit addresses aren't supported by Electrum or Bitcoin-core so you should create legacy SegWit address.

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